


Paradise. . . Not Quite Troubleproof

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Northern Exposure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-21
Updated: 2004-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-25 01:19:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1623923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for Aithine</p>
    </blockquote>





	Paradise. . . Not Quite Troubleproof

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Aithine

 

 

Paradise... Not Quite Troubleproof  
for Aithine

Up here in the clouds, everything looks white. Just beyond is the perfect blue of the Alaskan sky, tinged gold and red by the setting sun. Below is the vast, mountain-speckled, tree-dotted plain; the crashing, turbulent sea; a scattering of towns.

One town in particular catches the eye. Small and quiet without being sleepy. Buildings of brick and wood line the gently sloping roads, and as people hove into view, the eye can see that they are at once alert and relaxed; an odd combination, to be sure, but then again, this is an odd little town.

Let us follow one of these denizens. The first one we see we dismiss; we'll be focusing on him before too long. He is the lone resident of Cicely (for so this town is named) that is at the moment apprehensive, in fact decidedly so. Anxiety is coming off him in waves. Let's ignore him for the moment, and instead follow a young man of indeterminate age - he is perhaps fifteen, perhaps twenty-five. His guileless face is open but distant, as though his sneakered feet were in Cicely but his head were somewhere entirely else. Cairo, maybe. Tokyo. Moscow. Jupiter.

Absently, he zips his leather jacket - it's beginning to get chilly - and stuffs his hands into the pockets. Someone waves at him from across the street, but he is too distracted to notice. He narrowly misses walking into a streetlamp, and then he stops sharply because someone - someone very desperate, from the sound - has just called his name.

* * *

"Ed!"

Ed came back to himself with a start. He'd been thinking about... well, something about his movie, anyway. Ed found that when he got to planning it out, actually figuring out things like, say, plot or setting, his mind tended to wander. Meander, even. At the moment, he was trying to imagine what would happen if Luke Skywalker suddenly found himself in the Temple of Doom with Indiana Jones. Or - even better - in Woody Allen's Manhattan apartment. Fish out of water, for sure.

He looked over his shoulder, trying to locate the source of the voice. No one there, or at least, no one who seemed to be paying him the least attention. He shrugged.

"Ed!"

There it was again. Ed whirled, still saw no one, and frowned. The voice sounded on the edge of panic. "What?" Ed said, to the world in general.

"Up here! Hey!"

Oh. Ed craned his neck upward, shielding his eyes from the glare of the setting sun, and saw a silhouetted figure on the roof of a nearby building. When he moved into the shade, he could see that it was a frantically waving Joel Fleischman.

"Hey, Dr. Fleischman!" called Ed cheerfully. "Whatcha doing?"

"Look out, Ed!" called Joel. He motioned for Ed to stay put, and cast several nervous glances over his shoulders. "It could be anywhere!"

"What could?" asked Ed.

"The moose!" said Joel. "It was outside my office when I left, and it chased me up here! The thing tried to, to, to, to charge me, and I had to hide up here of all places, and it's still down there, I know it!"

Ed peered around the edge of the building and at the street beyond, which appeared for the time being to be mooseless. "I don't see a moose, Dr. Fleischman. Maybe you scared it away."

"Me? Scare it?" Joel shook his head in agitation. "No. No, a thing like that wouldn't just run away. It would wait, it would hide, until I came down."

Ed considered. "Was it a big moose?"

Joel gave a short, humorless bark of a laugh. "Big? I'll say it was big. And vicious. It made King Kong look like Curious George."

"Wow," said Ed respectfully. Taking great care to be quiet, he made his way around the side and then the back of the building; there was nothing there except an empty soda bottle, two trash cans, and a ladder lying on its side. He righted the ladder, set it against the building with a satisfying chack, and began to climb up.

"What are you doing?" Joel demanded.

"I'll help you keep watch," Ed replied. He hooked a leg over the edge of the roof and carefully negotiated his way over to where Joel was crouching. "Say, nice view, huh?"

"Yeah, it's terrific," muttered Joel. "I've gotta remember to call Fodor's about it."

"I bet it's great up here during the day," Ed went on, impervious to Joel's sarcasm. "When the sun's out, I mean." He waved to passersby, who waved back and moved on. "Don't worry, Dr. Fleischman. If there's a moose down there, we'll see it."

"And then what?" asked Joel. He was beginning to doubt the point of being up here, but the thought of going back down until he knew exactly the location of the moose - which he had seen, there was no doubt about that - was ludicrous.

Ed sat. "I don't know," he said thoughtfully. "If we don't get any ideas, I can get it to chase me until you can get to your truck, or back into your office or something."

Joel stared at him, touched in spite of himself. "You'd do that?"

Ed laughed. "Yeah. Of course. I can run pretty fast. So can a moose, but I know the town better." He spoke with a strange, happy solemnity; things will be fine, that voice said. Don't worry about a thing. I'm not.

The street was moose-free, at least as near as Joel could tell. He kept his position at the edge of the roof, feeling only slightly ridiculous. "So," he said, and tried to think of something to come after 'so.'

"So," Ed said. He waved to someone else and grinned.

"How's, uh... how's the movie coming?"

"Oh. It isn't really." Ed's voice was nonchalant. "I mean, I keep having ideas, but I can't string em together, y'know?" He looked to Joel, his bright eyes curious. "Have you ever had that problem, Dr. Fleischman?"

Joel considered for a moment. "Not that I can remember. I've never been much of a writer, though. I'm certainly no filmmaker."

"Well, neither am I," Ed pointed out.

"You will be, someday," Joel said. He wasn't sure if he meant to be soothing or reassuring, but Ed perked up even so.

"Yeah, I will be. You're right about that, Dr. Fleischman. Maybe I'll work this moose into my movie. It seems like the kind of thing I could write about." His eyes took on a faraway look, as though picturing the moose in various settings. Charging a hapless adventurer lost in the woods. Sneaking through a busy metropolis. Loose on a cruise ship.

The ladder chacked against the roof again, and Joel and Ed turned to see Holling's smiling face rising over the eaves. He had a large satchel slung over his shoulder, which he plunked onto the roof before climbing awkwardly off the ladder. "Hey, fellas," he said.

"Holling," said Joel, going to help him. "What are you doing?"

Holling stretched and peered over the edge. "My goodness. Never been up here before. Oh, Shelley said she saw you up here a couple of hours ago. Thought if you were still here you might be hungry." He raised a hand in greeting. "Hey, Ed."

"Hi, Holling."

"What are you boys doing, anyway?" He sat down next to the satchel and started to lift things from it - two Thermoses, one red and one silver; two sandwiches, wrapped up in cellophane; a small stack of bowls; plastic cutlery; mugs. From the red Thermos he poured out a cup of coffee and handed it to Joel.

Ed gestured to Joel with a grin. "Dr. Fleischman saw a moose."

"A moose? In town?" Holling opened the silver Thermos and filled one of the bowls with tomato soup. "Did it attack you, Joel?"

"No, but that doesn't mean that it won't when I go back down. God only knows where it is." Joel sipped at the hot soup and sighed. Holling passed a bowl of soup to Ed, who took it eagerly.

"Well now, I haven't seen a moose in a long time, but I think that if you leave it alone and don't, uh, provoke it, it'll probably leave you alone."

Joel stared at him. It was easy for Holling to say; he was used to the Alaskan wilderness and the beasts contained within. Then again, he hadn't seen the moose again, and it was difficult to remain panicked in the face of Ed's calm assurance and Holling's logic. Still, he had no plans to leave this rooftop until he had proof that the moose was gone completely... though what kind of proof anyone could provide was a mystery.

"I'm just glad O'Connell's not here," he muttered. "She'd be... patronizing and, and disdainful, like she'd be cool and collected if she ever saw a moose the size of the Chrysler building." Joel bit into a sandwich a tad more viciously than was necessary. "I'd hear about this from her for weeks. If it were her up on this roof, if she'd come up against a moose, she'd be just as panicked as anyone."

"You know, Joel," said Holling, nodding sagely, "you're probably right." Privately he thought nothing of the sort, but he decided it was best to humor the poor man. He was of the opinion that Maggie O'Connell could scare a moose into moving to another continent, or perhaps another planet.

Ed leapt to his feet and started to wave. "Hi!" he yelled. "Hey, up here!"

The Texas-tinged voice of Maurice answered back, infused with doubt. "Ed? What in hell's name are you doing up there?"

The boy gestured over his shoulder. "Hanging out with Holling and Dr. Fleischman."

Joel peered over the edge. "Careful, Maurice," he said.

"What for?" said Maurice. "I am safely on the ground. You three're the ones on the damned roof."

"Joel says there's a moose, Maurice," Holling volunteered. Joel sighed deeply and pressed a hand to his forehead. The more people that gathered, the more ridiculous he felt. This, he thought, was often the case in Cicely. It was one of the more unfair things about the town - full of crazies, and yet he, Joel Fleischman, was the one who came off abnormal. It was really very irksome.

"A moose?" exclaimed Maurice, laughing. "Where?"

"It chased me out of my office," said Joel with dying defiance.

"So what if there's a moose? Get down from there, Fleischman. You're the only doctor we've got, and you can't fix your own neck if you break it."

"No," said Joel. "Look, if it comes back -"

"There is no moose down here, Fleischman. Now get the hell off the roof before I come up there and drag you down."

Maurice was implacable. Joel stared down at him, feeling embarrassment in place of the familiar panic and stubbornness. He wasn't sure which feeling was less welcome. He heard Holling descend behind him, and Ed's footsteps.

"Getting cold, Dr. Fleischman. You want me to bring you a blanket or something?"

Joel looked up at him and, reluctantly, smiled. "Nah, that's okay, Ed, thanks. Guess I'll come down."

He stood and followed Ed down the ladder. Once on the ground, he felt some of the old nervousness return, but forced it away as he rounded the building. As he did so, Maurice shook his head, looking more amused than perturbed. "You're the limit, Fleischman. A moose?"

"See you tomorrow, Maurice," said Joel. "Bye, Ed. Good luck on your movie."

"Thanks, Dr. Fleischman. And good luck avoiding the moose."

Joel opened his truck and sat down, feeling a great sense of relief wash over him. He knew he hadn't imagined the moose - it had been there, big as life. At least, he was pretty sure. Fairly sure.

He laughed quietly to himself. "What a day," he muttered. As he drove away from there, he flipped on the radio.

"What really matters, I think, is learning when to accept what's in front of you, and when to look for your own meaning. What's real? What's not? What's in between? Do we really know what's out there, beyond the stars? I think we all have our own answers to that one, and you know what? I think we're all right. Call it Schroedinger's Universe if you want, but I say we've just got to define it for ourselves. Because if you know what's real, well, where's the fun? The fun lies in the guessing. Here's one for you, Joel."

*When this old world starts a-gettin' me down  
And people are just too much for me to face  
I'll climb way up to the top of the stairs  
And all my cares just drift right into space  
On the roof...*

 

 

 


End file.
